The Australian Media Industry: A View from the Top

Sydney.
I've travelled south for the Australasian Media & Broadcasting Congress, at which I'll speak tomorrow. Arriving this morning I've missed the opening keynote, but I'll try and blog as much as I can of the rest of the proceedings.

So, we start with a panel by Australia media industry leaders. Michael Anderson from Austereo begins by talking about the launch of digital radio, which he sees as an enhancement to what radio does - no longer something significantly new as it's taken so long to launch in Australia, but a useful addition nonetheless. He suggests that in the US Internet radio has not yet been a success - it is nigh anemic, and largely a failure, he says. The industry there is trying to grow through cost-cutting. The UK isn't much better, and Australia is in fact ahead of most other nations in terms of its digital radio market.

Pippa Leary from Fairfax Digital is next, and notes the challenge from digital media - and especially from audiences moving online. Fairfax is simultaneously trying to defend its newspaper assets, grow online media, and build an integrated media company. Currently, the business is organised by platform (print, radio, online), and within that by brand - but perhaps there is a need to reorganise according to audience structures instead: Fairfax needs to become a news company rather than a newspaper company, for example. (Peter Wiltshire from the Nine Network says that Nine is doing something similar - there's already an overarching organisational unit.) Moderator Peter Cox also notes that there's a problem with the Australian Financial Review, as the currently most online-resistant brand which attempts to extract revenue from selling data that may already be available directly online.

Tony McGinn from MCM Entertainment runs a business which includes a media division, and here especially radio production, and online music elements (the latter including something called movideo.com). Mobile is the logical next step for this, Tony says - and contrary to the interest in mobile TV, he says the sleeper market here is mobile audio. MCM already provides daily mobile content, and regards this area as a media network in its own right, analogous to TV and radio networks (some of this material is advertising-funded, incidentally). There is also some TV R&D taking place here. Additionally, MCM is doing Web development, and also has a technical services division, which is especially interested in real-time user analytics.

Subrat Mohanty from InfoSys is the last panellist. He notes the significant and sustained growth in the digital sector, and InfoSys provides services, technology, and application development to companies in this area. Where media conferences tend to focus on frontline business growth, in other words, InfoSys focusses on 'back office plumbing'. He notes that technology in countries other than Australia is often ahead of the curve, and this enables growth here as well.

Peter Wiltshire now notes the imminent launch of FreeView, the new 15-channel free-to-air digital television environment in Australia (incorporating multi-channel content from five all major TV networks - but notably not free-to-air radio programming). This will include an electronic programme guide (EPG) incorporating listings from all channels - something of a breakthrough in the local context.

Pippa Leary comments on the future for video on demand - she notes that a few years back, there was a limited future for this in Australia due to the poor broadband infrastructure in the country (especially literally in the country). This is a problem especially for HD content, Peter adds - and the cost of high-volume data transfer further delays take-up in Australia. This will disadvantage this country and the growth of digital media here, Tony McGinn adds. (But a comment from the audience rightly adds that HD isn't necessarily the major driver of take-up by audiences - as Mark Pesce would say, it's salience, not quality that rules.) Pippa adds that user involvement is happening in a number of circumstances now - users are able 'to talk back to brands' more and more.

How are any of these new developments monetised, though?, Peter Cox asks. How can these new digital areas be turned into businesses? Pippa Leary notes that Fairfax is in an interesting position as they are very well aware of the increasing use of Internet as against conventional media. The tipping point for Fairfax's way of operating was when Peter Brock and Steve Irwin died, and users demanded multi-media, multi-angle content covering such events, she says. Subrat Mohanty notes a development in the US where print ads in newspapers are automatically also posted online.

Is user-generated content a solution for ensuring a real Australian flavour to available media offerings? Radio is already a highly local medium, Michael Anderson notes, so Australianness this isn't much of a problem there - but it is now competing with a great deal of new material. Peter Cox notes that there is a difference in branding at local and (inter)national levels, then; similarly, for Peter Wiltshire, for example, branding of individual TV shows will be more important in the future than branding of Nine Network itself.

Michael Anderson notes that the relevance of the portal is diminishing with search; there is a drive towards disaggregation, and advertising on such disaggregated sites will need to be quite different in the future. Peter Cox adds that there is even a different approach to branding between the Sydney Morning Herald and its online counterpart smh.com.au - and Pippa Leary notes that there is only a 20% overlap in readership between the two products. Tony McGinn similarly notes that access patterns to the Websites of radio programmes produced by MCM are totally disconnected from when such shows go to air on the radio.

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